Our Kind of People Read online

  118 900 million condoms: “909.5m Condom Packets Sold in Nigeria,” Nigeria Daily News, Jan. 31, 2008, http://ndn.nigeriadailynews.com/templates/?a=5879.

  124 moral partnering: Daniel Jordan Smith, “Youth, Sin and Sex in Nigeria: Christianity and HIV/AIDS-Related Beliefs and Behaviour among Rural-Urban Migrants,” Culture, Health & Sexuality 6 (2004), no. 5: 425–37.

  126 positive moral connotations: Ibid., 431.

  126 more than one moral partner: Ibid., 432.

  127 Condom usage is not high: Ibid., 431.

  DEATH

  139 1.3 million people: AIDS Epidemic Update 09 (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Nov. 2009), http://data.unaids.org/pub/report/2009/jcl700_epi_update_2009_en.pdf; UNAIDS World AIDS Day Report 2011 (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, 2011), www.unaids.org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/documents/unaidspublication/2011/JC2216_WorldAIDSday_report_2011_en.pdf; National Policy on HIV/AIDS, Federal Government of Nigeria, 2009, http://nigeria.unfpa.org/pdf/ntpol.pdf

  139 two hundred thousand AIDS-related deaths: AIDS Epidemic Update 09; National Policy on HIV/AIDS.

  140 among the sexually active: Markus Haacker, ed., The Macroeconomics of HIV/AIDS (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2004), 2.

  140 more vulnerable to HIV: Ibid., 23.

  140 astoundingly brief forty-five years: National HIV/AIDS & Reproductive Health Survey, Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja, 2006.

  141 declining workforce: Haacker, Macroeconomics of HIV/AIDS, 37.

  141 Household incomes drop dramatically: Ibid., 47.

  145 ceremony and ritual: Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986), 44.

  150 “Claiming positive identity”: Jean Comaroff “Beyond the Politics of Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio) Politics, and the Neoliberal Order,” Public Culture 19 (2007), no. 1: 197–221.

  SPEAKING OF AIDS

  155 “the Nigerian invented noise”: Peter Enahoro, How to Be a Nigerian (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books and Safari Books, 1998).

  157 “safe-sex educator’s nightmare”: Mark Schoofs, “A Tale of Two Brothers,” part 2, Village Voice, Nov. 9, 1999, www.villagevoice.com/1999-ll-09/news/part-2-a-tale-of-two-brothers/3.

  HEALING

  191 dropped by 20 percent: UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, 2010).

  191 decreased by about 20 percent: Ibid.

  191 the numbers are not rising: Ibid.

  193 ten thousand dollars: Kelly A. Gebo, John A. Fleishman, Richard Conviser, James Hellinger, Fred J. Hellinger, Joshua S.Josephs, Philip Keiser, Paul Gagist, and Richard D. Moore, “Contemporary Costs of HIV Healthcare in the HAART Era,” AIDS 24 (2010), no. 17: 2705–15.

  197 “creation of a Global AIDS Fund”: Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases, Apr. 27, 2001, http://wwwupdate.un.org/ga/aids/pdf/abuja_declaration.pdf

  207 “a shared sense of humanity”: Lawrence Blum, “Compassion,” in Explaining Emotions, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) 507-18

  ALSO BY UZODINMA IWEALA

  Beasts of No Nation

  CREDITS

  COVER ILLUSTRATION BY THENJI NKOSI

  COVER DESIGN BY ROBIN BILARDELLO

  COPYRIGHT

  OUR KIND OF PEOPLE. Copyright © 2012 by Uzodinma Iweala. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Where necessary, names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of people interviewed.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Iweala, Uzodinma.

  Our kind of people : a continent’s challenge, a country’s hope / by Uzodinma Iweala.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-06-128490-8 (hardback)

  EPub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN 9780062097675

  1. AIDS (Disease)—Social aspects—Nigeria. 2. HIV infections—Social aspects—Nigeria. I. Title.

  RA643.86.N6I94 2012

  362.196’9792009669—dc23

  2011047861

  12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  *About one thousand dollars.

  *Refers to a program for the disabled championed by Nigeria’s then first lady Turai Yar’Adua.